MainStage's Modulation FX

MainStage has more "Modulation" plugins than any other category. 11 total. They're actually all pretty darn solid plugins too.

Lets take a look at some of these plugins...

First: ChorusThis one's a basic "three knob wonder" that really does function like a guitar FX pedal. The thing of it is, is that it's really hard to make this unit sound bad. It's a traditional chorus effect that delays the original signal, modulates it with an LFO (low frequency oscillator) and then blends it back in with your original signal. Try slower rates to get swirly pad sounds or faster rate + higher intensity to get bell like lead tones!

Second: Ensemble

This one is a chorus pedal on steroids. I LOVE this unit. It has a visual display which is super handy for getting an idea of how you're affecting your signal.

The secret sauce for this plugin is the "voices" control. You can take up to 8 delay lines of chorusing which can get you over the top detuned chorus sounds. Perfect for funky chord and poly synths or even really unique pluck sounds! I also love playing around with the "Random" oscillator to get some unpredictable movement in pads.

Third: FlangerBust out your crackers because its about to get CHEESY! Just kidding... kinda. Flanger is a bit of an infamous effect...

There are a plethora of examples of flanger being used to nasty and cheesy effect.

Here's the thing though: flanger is actually a really useful effect.You just have to know how and when to use it. For instance: if you're playing guitar, DON'T USE IT :D

All joking aside, the MainStage flanger plugin runs basically the same way as the chorus, just with a much smaller delay time. The added option to feed the signal back through the delay multiple times gives you that swirly character. Light amounts of flanger can go a really long way to add low mid character to pads and can sound AWESOME on deeper bass sounds, especially if they're bit gritty.

So there's a bit about the first three Mod plugins in MainStage. I hope that's helpful!

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